Savage Lands Early Access Review

Yes Nerds, yet another survival game with a crafting system, I swear that this is the only genre in development this year, and once again, I’ve taken the bloody time to play yet another survival sim, this one being completely different because it takes place in the snow, completely unlike Rust, 7 Days to Die, Minecraft and other survival simulations, because this game only has snow. It doesn’t have different biomes where you find different types of equipment, you literally just have snow. Essentially, Savage Lands is a gritty, brutal, first-person Open Fantasy World survival game, where you are stuck in the snow. Players have one goal: Stay Alive. Staying alive can be quite simple, so long as you don’t try and be overambitious, and settle down quickly. You start the game with nothing, stranded on a beach, where you can find some basic clothes, a few pieces of flint, some stones and a basic harvesting tool. Just chop some wood from trees, after that place a campfire and stay warm. The only other thing you need, is food. Which is a real pain in the ass when it comes to catching deer, so I opted for fighting wolves. They attacked me and you loot wolf meat from them, which surprisingly, is almost as good as deer meat, so unless you really want deer meat, or their hides, then don’t bother. They are too fast, and you’ll end up getting lost just chasing them. So after keeping warm and cooking some meat, what else is there to do? Not a lot. You can explore the whole island, which is pretty big in all fairness, but there actually isn’t much to see or do. You can find items spawning at landmarks or buildings, or craft your own. You can build a small town, or settle in a wooden shack, make some storage to put all that excess stone, meat and wood, and craft different weapons and armour that marginally help you in combat. After that, you are basically just repeating the process over and over, until you leave the game.

OH MA GHAD!!! A BEAR!!!

You could go hunting for high grade materials, but there isn’t much point, seeing as there are two game modes in place, friendly servers where it’s PvE, or Hostile, which is PvP. I couldn’t imagine how clunky the PvP would be, seeing as combat is essentially that; Clunky. You have a generic swing for all of your weapons, some very powerful, some rather weak, and some faster than others. In fact, the strongest weapon I’ve acquired took me forever to get the parts for it, and it sucks. It does 40 damage but it is so slow, I opt for the much easier to craft, slightly weaker sword that does 33 damage per swing, but is much quicker. Unless you are someone that really just needs to have everything, just stick to relatively basic stuff, because it does the job pretty well. I personally love the wolfskin armour because I can go out into the wilderness for longer because it keeps me all snuggly warm.

In terms of “fantasy” creatures, there are skeletons, more skeletons, a dragon that doesn’t ever attack you and skeletons with armour on. Oh and bears that are really powerful, but aside form that you have deers that clock an average speed of my car, wolves that always seem to attack you when you’re in your inventory screen, and plagued wolves, which sometimes disease you, if you don’t kill them quick enough. Disease basically is poison, which can be cured in seconds by eating berries which you find by cutting bushes with an axe (go figure!). The tree giants are probably the most interesting enemy, but they only attack you if you attack them.

Home sweet home…

I don’t want to seem like I’m picking on this game, because I’m really not, I think its a great idea, and some of the concepts are already there, things like the weather effects are amazing, but it just lacks in other areas, especially in the game play department. I reckon this’ll be one to watch the developer log on.

There really isn’t anything I could pick out about the game that makes it stand out from other survival games. Yeah, it’s in early access, but there really isn’t enough content to keep you busy for long. I’ve crafted every item available and built every structure in the space of two days, left with a huge stockpile of a wood and stones that I have no use for, other than occasionally repairing an item. I honestly hope this game takes off and adds more content, and I look forward to finally fighting the dragon, but for now, I’d give it a miss.

Erm…nice doggies?!

This game has some stunning detail for weather effects but just lacks in gameplay.

Not great, Not BadI honestly hope this game takes off and adds more content, and I look forward to finally fighting the dragon, but for now, I'd give it a miss.

About the Studio:

DigitalDNA Games is an indie game development studio, credited with developing some of the top grossing and highest user rated Xbox indie titles of all time; including the CastleMiner franchise, and Avatar Paintball, Xbox’s first avatar based first person shooter. DigitalDNA Games currently has over 14 titles released on XBLIG. Most of them #1 best selling titles.

Signal Studios is a Seattle-area developer of video games and interactive software applications founded in 2008. Signal’s founders combine years of experience across all disciplines in the games industry, working as leads and developers together at some of the industry’s top studios and publishers. The studio is the developer behind several award winning games and is currently developing original IP for consoles, PC, and mobile platforms. Signal’s current announced games include:

Signal also actively develops its own proprietary engine and toolset, SigEngine™, facilitating the massive content demands and rapid iteration necessary for today’s top-tier, AAA games.

Savage Lands is available to purchase on Steam for $19.99 (in Early Access)